The mix of bigotry, cowardice and pseudo-logic shown by the Indian government in voting against, and then losing the vote, on the right of United Nations staff to benefits for spouses of the same sex is fostered by the bizarre history of Section 377 of the penal code in India. India happened to be in the august company of Pakistan, China, Nigeria, Syria and Saudi Arabia, among several other nations, in voting against the official recognition of same-sex unions by the UN.

Barely a month after the Avijit Roy Roy was hacked to death in in Feb 2105, now a 27 year old blogger Oyasiqur Rhaman was attacked and killed in similar way in Dhaka on 30 March. See reports and statements

When Tahira Mazhar Ali, Pakistan’s pre-eminent women’s rights activist, was a teenager, she encountered the man who would go on to found the country. In 1941 Muhammad Ali Jinnah went to see her father Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan, Prime Minister of the then undivided Punjab, at his office on the Upper Mall in Lahore. “I know all about you,” Jinnah said reproachfully when introduced to her. “You prefer Jawaharlal to me.”